"Upstairs!" I hear a yell and pounding footsteps. I crawl out of the window until I'm hanging from my hands. I take a breath. I let go.
~
Living in a small town with a single mother, Mia Glenn never expected anything special to come of her life. She...
I walk to school as I normally do, making sure to keep my new sneakers off of the muddy snow banks on either side of the sidewalks. I breath in the crisp cold air, smiling at the snowflakes that lazily float down and catch in my hair and on my eyelashes. I will never understand how people hate winter. I also don't really know why I wore white shoes in the middle of winter, but hey, they go with everything.
"Coming through! On your left!" I hear a voice yell from behind me. I yelp and jump off the sidewalk just as a boy screams by on his bike, not even looking back at me to say sorry. Middle-schoolers. Because our town is so small, we have one big school for 7-12th grade, meaning there are a lot of kids in our school. The middles-schoolers annoy the hell out of me and probably every other high-schooler. I swear I'm going to find his bike and puncture the tires.
Chill out Mia, I tell myself. It's not that big of a deal. All I had to do was jump off of the sidewalk onto the snow.
Wait, no, nonono.Damn it!
With a gasp, I look down at my shoes that I'm sure are ruined with mud and pebbles. My heart rate should be slowing down, but it doesn't at all as I pick up my feet and place them back down. My feet aren't sinking. They should be sinking, a frantic voice in my head says. No, the snow is probably just hard with all the dirt. I bend over and place my hand on the snow, gently pushing, and my hand goes through the pillow soft flakes as easy as sliding through water.
WHAT is happening..? I think to myself as I step right where I just put my hand. My feet only sink about an half an inch into the foot and a half deep snowbank. They should sink as far as my hand. Right? With utter confusion building inside me I step off the snowbank and briskly walk down the sidewalk, trying to ignore what I just experienced. I keep telling myself that it's nothing, and I almost laugh out loud when my brain thinks 'what if you have powers or something cool like that?' Sure, that would be awesome. I'm definitely Elsa now.
I've always loved fantasy-adventure books and movies, but no way. I live in the real world. I can't let hope like that bring me up only to crash me back down because it's obviously not real. I live in a world where you jump from planes to fly and magic isn't real and, well, chestnuts roast on open fires. I only say that because that song is currently blaring from a house nearby, but it proves my point. I think chestnuts roasting on open fires anywhere besides the Christmas song would be the most odd thing I will ever see in this tiny town.
-
The school day goes by as every other one does. Five classes, lunch with my friend group. Two classes after lunch, then walk back home in the warming air.
Mom isn't home, which is expected. She works until 5:30, and it's only 3. So I do my homework, go on a short run, and decide to get in a cardio workout on my trampoline. The snow is mostly melted off of it by now, even though the snow everywhere else is very much still there. I would workout in our basement, but I can only do the same Youtube workout video so many times before I get bored of being inside so much. I just put on two layers of socks and pants, a jacket, hat and gloves, before climbing on the trampoline and trying to ignore the wetness of its surface already seeping through my socks.
I spend a while doing jumps and flips and other things, until I'm out of breath and have to breathe in through my shirt so my lungs don't hurt from the cold air.
Now that my whole body is warmed up, I have no problem flopping down on my back on the trampoline, glancing out at the beautiful woods.
My house is a nice, two floor home with a big backyard and woods that stretch about half a mile out to a big river. It's pretty cool, we even have a path in the woods we walk down to get to the river. My eyes drift to the sky, now blue with only some clouds. I smile to myself as I see a dog in one of the clouds. Then those clouds that seem to be connected, and more connected ones, and- I squint and make a weird face as I look at the whole span of clouds. There is a large string of clouds in a swirl, like a coiling snake. My oh-so-fun brain can't help but notice that the clouds seem to be circling above my house. The first thing I think of is a tornado, but I immediately reject the idea. The cloud is fluffy and white, coiling around and around, not like one big mass coming down. Just slowly circling up there. Around our house. Hm... It might just be a coincidence. It probably is. I'm probably just making things up. It's just some clouds. Just clouds!
"Ok," I mutter to myself, "get up, this is stupid. It's just clouds."
With that thought fighting for dominance over the ridiculous ones in my brain, I get my soaked body up and off the trampoline, and I try my best to disregard the fact that my feet don't sink into the snow at all. Again.
it's okay.
It's just some hard snow.
It's just some clouds circling my house.
Not as weird as actually roasting chestnuts on an open fire.
Right?
—————————————————————————
Second chapter done!
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Hope you all like it so far- also shoutout to the author of Stall who uses gifs all the time and I absolutely love it. I might use a few here and there;)
